Large Hadron Collider

Soooo... the LHC particle accelerator has been operational for the past week, firing particle beams half-way round its circuit to make sure it works properly. The eggheads at CERN reckon they're going to start full-on collisions early next year.

“I wish you wouldn’t keep appearing and vanishing so suddenly; you make one quite giddy!”
“All right,” said the Cat; and this time it vanished quite slowly, beginning with the end of the tail, and ending with the grin, which remained some time after the rest of it had gone.

Soooo... the LHC particle accelerator has been operational for the past week, firing particle beams half-way round its circuit to make sure it works properly. The eggheads at CERN reckon they're going to start full-on collisions early next year.

Forget 2012 - is 2010 the last year of the Earth's existence??

With a bit of luck it will, as I have had enough. Let's get it over with.

Most modern scientists are a bunch of attention-seeking hooligans that do nothing but harm people, get paid hundreds of thousands (usually of taxpayers' money), never achieve anything except what amounts to superstitious nonsense and are a danger to us all because of their unnatural experiments and their "science" amount to "let's try to mess up these particles and see what happens, shur what's the worst that could occur???"

I would be scared out of my mind of the LHC right now, but I actually think that the scientists have so little of a clue what they're doing that it will never even do ANYTHING (oh, they'll do some low-level stuff that was done years ago in a different way and pretend that it worked eventually). Superstring theory, string theory, it's all hogwash. All nonsense. All make-believe nonsense designed to fill PhDs and impressing the government. The entirity of modern research "science" apart from energy and mechanics and electronics, useful things like that, is all just a big, farcical money-making machine.

The people who are a part of this nice little academic social circle do nothing but draw huge sums of money from the people, and this transforms into drawing real legitimate resources of food, fuel and even escorts and it's because of them that there isn't enough food to go around in the world. And you know who I think are the biggest joke of all so I won't bother repeating myself on that. It all just pisses me off.

Most modern scientists are a bunch of attention-seeking hooligans that do nothing but harm people, get paid hundreds of thousands (usually of taxpayers' money), never achieve anything except what amounts to superstitious nonsense and are a danger to us all because of their unnatural experiments and their "science" amount to "let's try to mess up these particles and see what happens, shur what's the worst that could occur???"

I would be scared out of my mind of the LHC right now, but I actually think that the scientists have so little of a clue what they're doing that it will never even do ANYTHING (oh, they'll do some low-level stuff that was done years ago in a different way and pretend that it worked eventually). Superstring theory, string theory, it's all hogwash. All nonsense. All make-believe nonsense designed to fill PhDs and impressing the government. The entirity of modern research "science" apart from energy and mechanics and electronics, useful things like that, is all just a big, farcical money-making machine.

The people who are a part of this nice little academic social circle do nothing but draw huge sums of money from the people, and this transforms into drawing real legitimate resources of food, fuel and even escorts and it's because of them that there isn't enough food to go around in the world. And you know who I think are the biggest joke of all so I won't bother repeating myself on that. It all just pisses me off.

If exploding 10 megatonne hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere did not bring about the end of the world during all those tests I doubt a few particles fired around a glorified underground greyhound track will do any harm.

Most modern scientists are a bunch of attention-seeking hooligans that do nothing but harm people, get paid hundreds of thousands (usually of taxpayers' money), never achieve anything except what amounts to superstitious nonsense and are a danger to us all because of their unnatural experiments and their "science" amount to "let's try to mess up these particles and see what happens, shur what's the worst that could occur???"

Uhhh.... what?

Originally Posted by nicegirlsarenice

I would be scared out of my mind of the LHC right now, but I actually think that the scientists have so little of a clue what they're doing that it will never even do ANYTHING (oh, they'll do some low-level stuff that was done years ago in a different way and pretend that it worked eventually). Superstring theory, string theory, it's all hogwash. All nonsense. All make-believe nonsense designed to fill PhDs and impressing the government. The entirity of modern research "science" apart from energy and mechanics and electronics, useful things like that, is all just a big, farcical money-making machine.

It's not hogwash, it's theory. And it's the best idea we've had so far. Your telly is an example of a particle accelerator (albeit a simple one) at work. The implications to the Standard Model if the Higgs-Boson particle is identified and examined are immense - they don't call it the God Particle for nothing. Mind you, on the flip side you might be correct - nothing might happen and the LHC might turn out to be a waste of money. But given that there are several other particle accelerators in operation around the world that have been going for quite a few years, they wouldn;t have built the LHC for nothing.

Originally Posted by nicegirlsarenice

The people who are a part of this nice little academic social circle do nothing but draw huge sums of money from the people, and this transforms into drawing real legitimate resources of food, fuel and even escorts and it's because of them that there isn't enough food to go around in the world. And you know who I think are the biggest joke of all so I won't bother repeating myself on that. It all just pisses me off.

Hmm, you have a point here. It's not palatable to spend so much money on research when half the world is below the poverty line. I have no answer for that, and am as helpless to change it as anyone else.

Originally Posted by Quarterpoundher

If exploding 10 megatonne hydrogen bombs in the atmosphere did not bring about the end of the world during all those tests I doubt a few particles fired around a glorified underground greyhound track will do any harm.

At the speed of light. Into each other. But given that the universe is trying to kill us all anyway, I suppose we'll only find out when they turn it on properly.

At the speed of light. Into each other. But given that the universe is trying to kill us all anyway, I suppose we'll only find out when they turn it on properly.

Its two particles at the end of the day, even at the speed of light all they can do is convert their mass into energy, nuclear bombs contain matter many millions of times bigger if you have a bomb of only a few kilos. They rely on particles colliding but doing so exponentially so I don't see how just two colliding can destroy the world, at worst they might make a dent in the property prices of the people living above Cern but that is that absolute worst possible case scenario and even that is massively unlikely. A few such places have been colliding particles for years now including Cern and nothing has happened. Just a few squiggles on a computer screen.

If these particles could achieve a speed faster then light then mass becomes infinite so in theory two particles colliding could do this but as nothing can travel faster then light then its not possible

Its two particles at the end of the day, even at the speed of light all they can do is convert their mass into energy, nuclear bombs contain matter many millions of times bigger if you have a bomb of only a few kilos. They rely on particles colliding but doing so exponentially so I don't see how just two colliding can destroy the world, at worst they might make a dent in the property prices of the people living above Cern but that is that absolute worst possible case scenario and even that is massively unlikely. A few such places have been colliding particles for years now including Cern and nothing has happened. Just a few squiggles on a computer screen.

If these particles could achieve a speed faster then light then mass becomes infinite so in theory two particles colliding could do this but as nothing can travel faster then light then its not possible